Thursday, November 11, 2010

being that we mostly paid for our wedding by ourselves {me: grad student, him: self-employed}, we tried to save our pennies every way we could. that's why we ended up with a cozy backyard wedding, all handmade decorations, and food we whipped up ourselves. dannon was in charge of the food, and we enlisted the help of some of our best foodie friends, as well as wrangling up the family to help in the kitchen the morning of the wedding. it worked out perfectly!

we put out cocktails and appetizers for people to snack on when they first arrived at the wedding, which stayed out all day. for the appetizers, we provided large platters of various fruits {hooray california produce!}, and had an old-timey popcorn cart.

for the cocktails, dannon created large pitchers of passion tea lemonade {half tazo passion tea + half lemonade}, ginger limeade {half limeade + half ginger tea + ginger shavings}, and white wine sangria. for weeks before our wedding, dannon made all sorts of versions of the sangria until we found the perfect recipe {in our opinion, that is}.

for our dinner, we had pre-packed picnic baskets, which fed either 4 people or 8 people. not all of our guests knew each other, but we knew that they would all become the best of friends if they had the opportunity to mingle. so not only did we include a lot of fun and games to spark friendships, but we made the dinner a time of sharing and meeting knew people too.

the dinner turned out so ridiculously delicious! and everyone loved the spirit of sharing a picnic in the warm sunshine. of course, i barely got to eat. i think that's pretty common for brides and grooms. luckily, my friend sheena handed me her plate at one point to make sure i was getting some sustenance. i got by with a little help from my friends!

the dessert was probably my favorite part! again, dannon spent the entire week before the wedding baking up a storm in our kitchen. and of course, we had to try everything before the wedding to make sure it was all edible and yummy... and also if there were any desserts that came out defective, we had to just go ahead and eat those too!